A precept of the Archbishop of Canterbury forbidding barbers to carry on their trade on Sundays / by D'Arcy Power.

  • D'Arcy Power
Date:
[1909]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A precept of the Archbishop of Canterbury forbidding barbers to carry on their trade on Sundays / by D'Arcy Power. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    they were shortly afterwards chosen cardinals of the United Church. Condulmier was elected Pope on March 3rd, 1431, and he died at the age of 67 on Feb. 23rd, 1447. During his pontificate, and chiefly at his instigation, Fra Angelico decorated the Vatican chapel and the Pantheon was restored ; his gates still adorn the central doorway at St. Peter’s. In person he was tall and spare, handsome when young, imposing when old : a martyr to gout, though he drank nothing but water. He slept little and was reserved and retiring, rarely lifting his eyes from the ground on any public occasion. He was singularly uncultivated and was in no way distinguished for political capacity, yet he had to manage the affairs of the church at one of the most dangerous crises of her history. Mr. Sidney Young, F.S.A., states in “The Annals of the Barber-Surgeons ” that Thomas Arundell, Archbishop of Canterbury, denounced the barbers of London for Sunday trading in 1413. His precept is addressed to the mayor and aldermen of London, and after threatening the penalties of the greater excommunication it goes on to say : “ But, dearest children, seeing that so greatly has the malice of men increased in these days, a thing to be deplored, that temporal punishment is held more in dread than clerical, and that which touches the body or the purse more than that which kills the soul, we do heartily intreat you, and, for the love of God and His law, do require and exhort you that taking counsel thereon, you will enact and ordain a competent penalty in money to be levied for the Chamber of your City, or such other purpose as you shall think best, upon the Barbers within the liberty of your City aforesaid, who shall be transgressors in this respect ; that so, at least, those whom fear of the anger of God doth not avail to withhold from breach of His law, may be restrained by a scourge inflicted upon their purse, in the way of pecuniary loss.” An ordinance was made in consequence of this precept to the effect that no barber, his wife, son, daughter, apprentice, or servant should work at such craft on Sundays within the libirty of the city either in hair cutting or shaving on pain of paying 6s. 8d. for each offence ; 5s. thereof to go to the new work at the Guildhall and the remainder to the wardens or masters of the barbers within the city. The document which is here printed recites the precept quoted by Mr. Sidney Young. It is dated 32 years later and is directed, as the context explains, against the barbers who shaved on Sundays and sheltered themselves by living in places exempt from ordinary episcopal visitation. The fact that such a second precept was issued has been lost sight of and for this reason, as well as for its interest as a contribu- tion to a study of the development of Sunday observance in England, I have thought it worthy of preservation in the pages of The Lancet.
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